January 1, 2000

IDENTITY

Seeking a Home in the Brave New World

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

ach day, in the courtyard of the
nation's most secure federal prison in Florence, Colo., a strange convocation takes
place. Three men stand in isolated mesh
cages and talk for an hour. One prosecutor
has called it "the oddest kaffeeklatsch in the
history of Western civilization." Its members are Timothy J. McVeigh, who bombed
the federal office building in Oklahoma
City; Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomer; and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing. And recently, a place was reserved for
Luis Felipe, the leader of the violent Latin
Kings gang in New York, who arranged
three murders from his prison cell.

IDENTITYis more than just the image we have of ourselves. It is a sovereign territory whose frontiers we cross a thousand times a day on the urgent business of trying to find our place in the larger world. In the future, the starting point of that journey may only grow more obscure.

And what do the members of this kaffeeklatsch discuss? Movies, we are told -- the
one cultural experience shared by all Americans, no matter what their criminal proclivities. But there may be other common
ground. This right-wing extremist, mathematical Luddite, Islamic fundamentalist
and Latin gang leader not only compose the
oddest kaffeeklatsch in Western civilization,
they also share a disgust of Western civilization. Broadly speaking, each has rebelled
against the 20th-century culture of "modernity." And the rebellion reveals much about
the contested status of "identity" at the
beginning of the 21st century.

Consider their common enemy. Mr. McVeigh's militia mind objected to the liberal
institutions and democratic process born in
the European Enlightenment; in their place
he was determined to establish a new world
in which his notion of identity would reign
supreme. Mr. Kaczynski left a trail of mutilation and murder in his attempt to overturn
the life of "modern man," dreaming of an
identity that would rise, he wrote, out of
untamed Nature, "independent of human
management and free of human interference and control." Mr. Yousef could chat
about how modern Western ideas of rights
and liberty are a plot by the Zionists, whose
modern nation-state trespassed on the religious claims of Islam. And Mr. Felipe might
explain why his creation of a violent ethnic
gang, ruthlessly demanding its own laws
and loyalties, should displace the blandly
secular, melting-pot kingdom of society.

In each case, the modern world is attacked for standing in the way of identity's
claims because identity is not just a declaration of belonging; it is a declaration of
opposition.

Identity is a dissent from the
universal; it declares an exception.

The exception it declares is also from the
demands of modernity. The 18th-century
Enlightenment gave birth to the idea that
there is something beyond identity, that one
might be more than a citizen, or an aristocrat, or a deist or an Aryan. One might be, in
the best of all possible worlds, a member of
a species, endowed with inalienable rights,
deserving guaranteed liberties. Society was
to be defined not by inherited difference but
by inherited humanity. The American Declaration of Independence is not a declaration of identity but a declaration of freedom
from compelled identity. Modernity has
often accommodated identity, but only by
requiring that it submit to a higher law.

This opposition between identity and modernity has defined the main struggles of
the 20th century. Identity's evil triumph was
in fascism. Nazism opposed the notion of a
universal humanity united under the rule of
reason; it celebrated a national identity that
staked its claims in blood. Other violent
declarations of identity have occurred when
national sovereignty lost its power: recent
tribal genocides in Africa and Eastern Europe were assertions that identity should
define civil authority.

The forces of Enlightenment, though,
have led to problems as well. Universal
principles might seem noble enough, but in
practice they often led to atrocity. How,
after all, did communist tyrannies develop?
By asserting that the rulers possessed a
humane vision justified by science and reason; sacrifices would have to be made in
service to that vision, but they would be
made for the good of all. The number of
deaths attributable to such utopian visions
in the last century easily rival those attributable to national genocides.

Each pole, then, has its dangers. And the
struggle between them will cast its shadow
into the 21st century. But how has this future
struggle been envisioned? And what is most
likely to unfold? Forecasters during this
century have been far less worried about
identity madness than Enlightenment madness, embodied in the triumphant technological state. That state has provided the
familiar dystopia of 20th-century science
fiction -- from Aldous Huxley's still-disturbing vision in "Brave New World" to films
like "Blade Runner" or "The Matrix."

These predictions of modernity's evils
have also come to embody the way we see
our world. In novels, films and computer-hacker fantasies, we imagine ourselves to
be powerless puppets and pawns, caught in
the identity-crushing maw of corporate capitalism, government, law, media and social
institutions. Typically, salvation is offered
by an iconoclast, an outlaw who shatters the
oppressors' bonds, ushering in a new age. In
practice, this revolutionary myth can occasionally lead to real reforms. But it also
leads to exaggerated perceptions and ready-made villains familiar in American culture.
The kaffeeklatsch members see the world
this way. They claim to be its saviors.

But generally the myth does not, like the
kaffeeklatschers, invoke premodern identity to overturn modernity; the state is not
replaced with an ethnic, religious or romantic paradise. Instead, identity is itself seen
as a creation of the corrupt world, "socially
constructed," as many academic studies
now assert. It, too, is imprisoning, ruthlessly
imposed. After the libertarian revolution,
even identity's constraints will be shed; one
will finally be able to freely invent oneself.

Some see modernity as the archenemy, an excuse to render individuals powerless and a reason to rebel.

This is an old fantasy, imagined by communist tyrants as well, but technology is
reinvigorating it. Internet role-playing
games allow the invention of identities.
Test-tube conceptions have clouded notions
of parents and children; genetic engineering will go even further. And bioengineering
is creating human-mechanical hybrids, in
which artificial limbs and organs are united
with blood and flesh. The inventor Raymond
Kurzweil has even argued that in the next
century computers will develop consciousness, creating a new species of humanity,
amplified in its powers. We are being constructed? Well, then, let us construct ourselves. Technology will liberate us from the
oppressions of technology. The future will
free us from both identity and modernity.

These grand hopes are also being encouraged by the weakening of the most significant political invention of modernity: the
nation-state. Commerce and conversation
are becoming borderless transactions. Cultural distinctions are dissolving. In Europe,
countries have already ceded some economic and symbolic independence to form the
euro, the first modern currency not associated with a particular country. The United
States, in recent military actions, has declined the prerogatives of a world power
and insisted on multinational consensus.

Some think that transnational corporations will become all-powerful, requiring
further revolutionary spasms. But utopians,
undeterred, believe that racial and national
identities will fade, that distinctions between the sexes will disappear along with
traditional family roles, that a global union
based on libertarian principles will evolve,
that technology will be so inexpensive that it
will democratize the world.

Yet these prospects seem unlikely. Yes,
social roles will change with prosperity and
technological innovation, just as they have
in the past. Yes, there will be a greater need
for international authority. Yes, humans
will have engineered parts and machines
with human qualities. But identity's demands will not disappear, nor will the challenge of mediating between those demands
and those of a grander social compact.

There may be no escaping identity, because -- so it seems -- humanity cannot
exist without creating such distinctions and
allegiances. We seem to have an inalienable
tendency to establish circles of identity,
beginning with allegiances of family or
tribe, extending outward to allegiances of
profession or religion or material interest,
encompassing the allegiance of nation, and,
only finally, the allegiance of the human.
These circles may change shape and range,
but can they ever be eliminated? Every
utopian project tries to undo these bonds,
beginning with the family circle; and every
attempt becomes inhuman in its demands.

T
HERE may also be no escaping
modernity. It provides the premises and vocabulary -- of rights,
reason and representation -- that
permeate even efforts to demolish it. So as
the new century begins, many of modernity's opponents deal in paradox. They reject
the Enlightenment in the name of the Enlightenment. They celebrate the particular
in the name of universalism. Identity is
treated as the apotheosis of reason. Some
supporters of multiculturalism, for example, at once reject Enlightenment ideals --
claiming that even reason is culturally relative and unjustly imposed -- and enthrone
them, invoking equal rights.

Far more unsettling, though, is the already familiar sight of terrorist groups,
kaffeeklatsch types and rogue states taking
arms against modernity in the name of
identity, invoking notions of rights and
equality while violently undoing their meanings, turning modernity against itself.

So, as the 21st century begins, the struggles of the 20th will mutate.

But their consequences may remain familiar. We will still be tempted to prefer
extreme formulas to messy truth. Even
now, dystopian visions are so prevalent, we
tend to forget that imperfectly just societies
really do exist, all around us; utopian visions are so tempting, we tend to forget their
impossibility. Modernity is so frequently
attacked, we tend to forget its necessity.
And the passions of identity can be so frightening we tend to forget their inevitability.